


Summer Camp Kind of Love

by ButterfliesInMyStomach



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: Campfires, Crushes, F/F, Kinda Fluffy, Marshmallows, Poker, Rose is a pain-in-the-ass, Summer Love, Swimming, Swimsuits, Teen Romance, Teenagers, but Luisa has a crush on her anyway, camp fun!, implied skinny diping, locker room tension, red bikini, swim camp
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 01:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15875493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterfliesInMyStomach/pseuds/ButterfliesInMyStomach
Summary: Luisa attends swim camp which she really loves. But this year, she's stuck with the most uptight mentor in the camp - Rose. She won't let Luisa do less than she's capable of, meaning, she's always on her case. Luisa thinks she hates her, but how big of a difference do love and hate have anyway?





	Summer Camp Kind of Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paula_roisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paula_roisa/gifts).



> Hey, peeps!
> 
> So, this might be it from me for a while (except for the make up fic(s) I have promised khem), but I'm still hopeless when it comes to these two fools, so I wouldn't take me seriously, either, no. :)))
> 
> But, this fic is the beginning of my make up fics for paula_roisa. I know, girl, that the first chapter is not as much of fluff and full-of-love as it could be, but this is what I have in mind for the second one ;)))) I also have another fic coming for you in a while... I hope you will be there for it (haha, Friends pun!) <3 You're amazing, and it is so great that you're writing yourself now, too! I haven't had the time to read your work's new chapter, but I will as soon as I post this! xx  
> I hope you'll enjoy this :)
> 
> And to everyone else who has taken the time to open this fic, only love to you and I hope you'll like it :)
> 
> Love,  
> -H.

Tall girl in tight red sports shorts and just a white tank top – she had been in too big of a time shortage to run to her room to get a bra – jumped back as Luisa came splashing to this side of the pool. She glared at her, the furrow between her brows covered with tiny drops of chloride-infused pool water. Crunching down in front of the swimming goggles removing brunette in the pool, she kept her grimace like a marble statue, the wrinkle of her nose so deep and firm, Luisa wasn’t sure if she could ever get rid of it again.

But it did disappear once she started talking, not forgetting the exasperated sigh she loved to begin her monologues with. “You do know your goal is _not_ to make your mentor wet?”

Luisa pushed her foggy goggles up to her forehead and leaned on her aching arms on the redbrick edge of the swimming pool. She'd been that _lucky_ to get Rose as her mentor in swim camp this year – the most demanding, pain in the ass, exhausting one of them. Mentors were at least a year older than their mentees and preferably, more skilled and experienced. Rose had both of the latter, alright. There wasn’t a tournament her name hadn’t been among the three best, her results were impressive enough to earn her a pretentious place in a high-end boarding school. But Luisa was pretty sure her ego wouldn’t let her attend a middle-class family appropriate public school, anyway.

As good as Rose was when it came to doing a perfect flip, a strong breaststroke, or a persistent butterfly, her blow whistle was always ringing too loudly into Luisa's ear, and her temper seemed to be shorter than Luisa's will to be in her mercy.

So now, too, Luisa wasn’t too eager to show effort while practicing how to make it to the other side of the pool without dying in the middle of doing the butterfly. She only stared at her mentor with utter annoyance and blew a drop of water off the tip of her nose.

“And you do know you’re not supposed to kill me before my dad picks me up in two weeks?”

Rose rolled her eyes. She did have stunning eyes, though. Sometimes Luisa thought that these light blue marbles were the only reason she hadn’t gone to talk to the coach, yet.

“Exactly, so, I'd really appreciate it if you’d keep the breathing pace we went over beforehand. That way I don’t have to explain to your dear daddy why all life has drained out of you,” Rose almost spit out the last word. Leaning lower, toward Luisa's dripping face, she added, “Now, stop whining and give me ten more laps.”

With a sigh and a mental note to ignore her mentor's heart-stopping blue eyes, she pulled her goggles on and slipped under the water again.

 

Apart from the fact that her mentor could be – was, actually – a real pain, Luisa quite enjoyed swim camp. This wasn’t her first year, so she wasn’t that geek who ate her lunch alone, anymore. She hung with a bunch of other girls her age, some of them better swimmers than her, others pretty much beginners. But it didn’t matter what your lap time was when they were fishing by the lake, taking too many silly pictures of each other, talking shit about their mentors under midnight-cool sleeping bag baldachins, or spending their time in one of their most enjoyed ways – poker nights. Over the course of last summer's camp, Luisa had become quite the player. It didn’t do bad for her that she’d pranked some singles out of her brother's eleven-year-old’s pockets, too. But this wasn’t another Saturday evening in their suite in the Marbella, playing _Go Fish_ – this was the real deal. For her, at least.

With the reputation of last year’s finest, she dealt out everyone’s cards. She hadn’t even checked her own cards yet when she could already spot Jo, one of her better swimming friends, drop her eyes with a fling of disappointment glaring through. That was the thing when it came to poker; keep a straight face and no one will be able to tell if you’re really sporting a full house as you up your bet, or you’re just wishing that you were. After a week of openly giggling to every long-expected or frowning to the unwanted cards, Luisa had finally got the hang of it last year.

She wouldn’t dare to do less this time.

And of course, she didn’t. After Luisa had won three games, one of her friends was short on five bucks, some glittery nail polish, a swim cap. One other girl on a dime, a Sephora coupon, a stick of mint gum. Not to mention the endless number of hairbands tied into a knot – a courtesy of the rest of her friends. Luisa eyed her claim, pulling everything her friends were now missing toward her lap with a victorious grin.

“Sorry, girls. Still, it was a pleasure. Anyone up for another game?” she looked around hopefully in the too bright lights of the game room. By the looks of her playmates’ faces, she’d have to settle for a game of solitaire if she’d still want to lay cards that evening.

She hummed with disappointment ringing in her tone and gathered the cards. All of her friends looked as she shuffled, the deck flying from one of her hands to the other.

“I’ll play with you,” a familiar voice came not far away. Luisa could hear her whistle go off in her head and pierce her eardrums. Rubbing her left earlobe, she turned in her spot behind the dark wooden table, her eyes finding their footing on her ever so cheerful mentor.

Rose raised one of her brows as if to say “so, are you in or not.” Her eyes were still, even in the merciless fatigue of the day, brilliantly blue. As Luisa stared at her trapping gaze, she knew her reputation as the camp poker champ would most likely dissipate once she’d take her mentor up on the challenge. But the more she tried to come up with excuses in her head to politely decline, the more she became intrigued by the chances of actually being triumphant.

“Jo, let the girl have a seat.”

Luisa's friend stood up from the chair facing the current poker master to let the redheaded challenger sit eye to eye with her. As she landed her loose-fitting sweatpants clad ass in that chair, Luisa couldn’t break the contact between their eyes. All through the first round, she kept her gaze on her, trying to read the reflection of her cards in her sight. But Rose wouldn’t betray her hand.

At first, Luisa thought Rose was bluffing. Cards didn’t seem to bring any sparkles to her eyes. Yet, her bets kept increasing in an exponential rate.

But as the girl took a moment before revealing her hand, a tiny light flickered on in those teal eyes, and Luisa _knew_ Rose had it good.

The thing was, Luisa herself had been good-heartedly bluffing the whole way through the game. There was a shy beginning of a flush in her hand, but nothing further from it.

She could taste blood on the tip of her tongue as she chewed on her lip. Rose smirked with a curved mouth, and let her cards fall in front of her.

“Four queens,” she announced, only daring to show a hint of pride in her hand. “You?”

Luisa swallowed down the bitter pill of surrender and exposed her hand. “I didn’t shuffle that well.”

A bright smile came across Rose’s face as she flicked her eyes from her own cards to Luisa's.

“Seems like it,” she commented while pulling her winnings to her lap. “You want to go for another? I wouldn’t want you to stay a loser in front of your friends.”

Rose crossed her arms under her chest, again, a challenge in her eyes. Luisa could start to tell what the girl's probable motivation for swimming was – the heat of the competition. She could also tell that Rose was roping her into another loss again, but she didn’t have anything to lose anymore.

With a confident nod, she accepted Rose’s challenge. This time, they let Jo do the cards – so it would be fair.

The atmosphere around the game table was thick; if Luisa hadn’t been so engrossed in the match, she would have felt the tension heavily lean on her shoulders.

Rose’s facial expressions varied more than the previous game. But still, Luisa couldn’t be entirely sure until Rose would unveil her cards.

After Luisa upped the bet, going all in, Rose looked at her funny. Luisa shifted in her chair as Rose’s eyes peered through her; it felt weird, but also kind of nice.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just wondering.”

“About what?”

Rose squinted her eyes. “Why you would go all in if you didn’t have anything.”

She wet her lips and moved her far-left card to the middle. “Out of pure curiosity.”

Luisa eyed her cards, the satisfying picture of a straight flush in her hand. Rose might have had it good, but Luisa probably had better.

“How do you know I don’t have anything? And besides, isn’t this whole game built on bluffing?”

“Well, yes, it is. But it’s hard to win in case your opponent is holding the hand of dreams,” Rose fidgeted with her far-right card, “and it’s your eyes. They keep falling back on mine. You’re drowning and looking for desperation in my face for a life vest. But you won’t find any.”

Her fingers slid on the table, and she started tapping against the surface. Luisa was confident in her hand, but it didn’t stop her arms from getting goosebumps with every tap of her mentor’s fingers against the table.

“Sure about your poker face?”

“Oh, please. I don’t have a _poker face_. I can manage my emotions well enough without one.”

She gathered her cards into her right hand to use the left one to release her scarlet hair from her tight ponytail. Considering her bet with pouty lips – which Luisa really enjoyed – she pushed the stack of hairbands, cash, and honestly, everything she could find in her pockets to the rest of their bets. It seemed like a bold move, but as Rose pulled her fairly red lips into a straight line again, Luisa could tell this might be her win, after all.

Silence followed. No one dared to say a word as the two girls stared at each other with their bets on the table and their cards in their hands.

Rose cocked an eyebrow.

“On three?”

Luisa nodded.

Awkwardly, they mumbled a one-two, and flipped their cards on three.

“Fuck.”

 

The following morning, Luisa was up with the sun, even before her breakfast toast. She wasn’t interested in making a habit of it, though; her routine insisted on her dragging herself out of bed by the time the bread in the cafeteria was already stale and all the best cereals gone. She didn’t mind it, she was more of an omelet kind of girl anyway.

To not let the three spare hours go to waste, Luisa jumped into her swimsuit, and as these sharp morrow sunrays peeked behind a few lost clouds, she was already stretching by the pool. Swimming was not only an athletic activity for her, but a time for her own thoughts. On dry land, she rarely had time to have a look inside her own mind; there were too many other people whose thoughts she was eager to hear or reflect on. But this, this was her space.

All bones in her body popped, she shook her legs once or twice again, feeling the tough mattress of her bunk bed in her sore limbs. A good groan and a sigh remedied that, and she got up on the block, and fixed her swim cap. It was a nuisance, yes. It’s not exactly comfortable to pull on a rubber hat around your head, but swimming with it was actually better than without it.

Only goggles to pull on, and she hooked her fingers just the right amount around the edge of the block. Angling her body to get a decent dive start, Luisa took a deep breath to prepare her body for the upcoming coolness of the morning water.

She leaped into the blue water, and her muscles automatically switched to training mode. By the end of her first lap, her lungs were aching for a breath of fresh air and her hands expressing their dissatisfaction with the burden of an early bird workout. Luisa ignored all of that through gritted teeth and kept jack-knifing from one side of the pool to the other. She didn’t time herself, she rarely did, but if she had, the numbers would have approved of her morning practice.

But Luisa didn’t need a stopwatch to tell her how her laps were going. This swim was purely for her self-indulgent reasons to think without the white noise of everyone else talking.

With twenty laps of relentless freestyle strokes throbbing in her nearly warmed up arms, she pushed herself up on the pool's edge. Morning breeze kissed water dripped back to pool as she exhaled through the curtain of droplets. This was as relaxing as it could get.

“I appreciate the extra effort,” Luisa turned her head by a thirty-degree angle, meeting her previous night's poker opponent. She pushed her vision-blurring goggles to her head and grinned.

“Morning to you, too.”

Rose looked at her with a beginning of a smile toying with her lips. It seemed she, too, was in the middle of a morning workout. Luisa flicked her eyes to the girl’s shoulder where a bundle of freckles painted her fair skin. It probably wasn’t supposed to be bare, but Luisa was more than happy that it wasn’t covered by Rose’s black Adidas shirt.

The redhead fixed her famous tight red shorts – the ones she’d been sporting to yesterday’s practice – and pulled one of her earbuds out.

“Wow, is it possible that _Luisa Alver_ is up _before_ breakfast?”

“I had some leftover boost from yesterday's poker match to use up. You know, the one that I got from my victory over you,” she proudly poked.

Rose rolled her eyes like she usually did, and Luisa couldn’t help but wonder if they'd gotten bluer overnight.

“Leave some for me, too,” Rose said, without realizing how it would sound out loud. “For afternoon’s workout, I mean,” she quickly added with more freckles now visible on her face. She adjusted her shirt, covering the bare spot on her shoulder, and popped her earbud back in her ear. “See you later, Luisa.”

Luisa watched her jog off, leaving her to daydream about her redheaded mentor’s exposed neck and that vein that popped under her pale skin. It was a good thing that the pool was cold. Because Luisa wasn’t, anymore.

 

The next few days Luisa spent alternating between working out, resting – as Sundays were swimming free days, _Snooze Sundays_ , they called them – and catching up with her father. Whenever Luisa was away from home (and by home, Luisa meant her and her brother’s joint hotel rooms at the Marbella, a five-star resort by the sunny Miami beaches), her dad would make the time in his fully-packed schedule to make sure Luisa was doing well. They would often speak for hours on the phone; they were as close as a successful business man of a dad and his daughter could possibly be. Emilio, Luisa's father, really tried. But sadly, sometimes, not hard enough. There were many swim meets Luisa had left with a medal hanging around her sorrow-bowed neck, because Emilio hadn’t been capable of making the time to show up for her. The first times had been heart-breaking sights to see, but as Luisa progressed as a swimmer and the bow of her head didn’t dive that deep anymore, it had become an inevitable part of Luisa's life she'd learn to look past.

This time, however, he _promised_ , gave _his word_ , he'd cancel the meeting he'd planned for the time of Luisa's camp end's swim meet. To say that Luisa's heart swelled up three sizes as he said this, would be unfairly understated.

“ _I’ll be there fifteen minutes before your competition begins_.”

Luisa's chapped lips curved into a bright smile. It had been a while since he'd last been that considerate. “Dad, it’s fine. If you have a meeting, you don’t have to come,” of course, she had to play coy.

“ _I insist! Maybe I'll even succeed in taking your brother with me. He has been missing you a lot, Luisa._ ”

Luisa shifted in her bed, she'd never been too good at staying still while on the phone. She kept swinging her legs over the bed and back, earning a few soon-to-be bruises in the process. “Okay. And afterwards we can go to Rico's for pizza, right?”

Her father was chuckling in his low scratched voice on the other end. “ _We’ll see. But I have to go now, darling. Say hello to your coach from me._ ”

Luisa mumbled an okay-I-will-daddy and a soft truthful I-love-you before he could hang up on her. This promised to be one of the best competitions she’d had so far – her father was coming to cheer her on (even though Luisa was the eldest of her father’s children, she was a sucker for attention), maybe even her brother, and she felt in her top shape.

And as she made her way through the lukewarm water of the pool under the warm colors of the evening sky with ease, she knew she was. Rose only followed her with her own eyes as Luisa demonstrated her best butterfly strokes. After a few laps, the girl in the pool leaned on the pool’s edge, her goggles still on. She grinned at Rose like this was the best swimming she’d ever done. With a smugness coating her face, she pulled her goggles down to tangle around her neck.

“Not bad, huh?”

Rose squinted at her, kneeling down on the marble squares set around the pool.

“I know you can do better,” she swiped across her phone’s screen and grimaced at the timer. “Could be a few seconds less.”

“For a person who says she can hide her emotions well, you’re not doing that well right now.”

Rose scoffed with a hint of a laugh. “We’re still on that?”

Luisa nodded innocently. “I beat your ass in something. I’m going to remember it for a good while longer.”

Rose really laughed this time, resetting the timer on her phone, and standing up again.

“Okay, _Poker Face_ , give me another five laps, and you can go back to your friends to brag about the time I let you win in poker.”

“What?!” Luisa exclaimed, already having adjusted her goggles on her nose. Rose only blew her sharp whistle and gestured for Luisa to begin. So, she let it be, for now.

After her laps, she of course confronted Rose about it. But as Rose herself had admitted, she was a tough one to unravel. In other words, she ignored Luisa's bribes to admit to letting her win.

“I just told you that to motivate you to finish your laps. And it worked – your time improved by a whole second. You should be proud,” Rose said as she walked Luisa to the showers. She’d never done that before. And if Luisa hadn’t felt inferior to the girl before, now, as she stood beside her in full-length, Luisa did. Rose had a good head's length on her.

“I _am_ proud. But of my incredible poker skills,” she explained while thinking if Rose had been this tall all the times before when they'd been together. But Luisa had to admit that she liked how tall Rose was; she could see her jawline so perfectly turn at just the right angle above her neck. She could see the tip of her nose angled up just a bit – it was cute.

Rose looked at her, _really_ looked at her, and Luisa's heart made a double-take.

“What will it take for me to get you swimming like you’re born to?”

“I’ll guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

They stopped in front of the shower room door. Luisa slung her towel over her shoulder and smiled.

“Considering the fact that tomorrow’s the last day of camp, we don’t have that much time to do that,” mused Rose. “Unless you'll return next year.”

It might have purely been the fruit of Luisa's imagination, but she believed to have seen a flash of hope appear in those blue, oh, so blue eyes.

“Are you going to be mentoring again?” Luisa asked carefully.

“Yes.”

Luisa formed a deep in thought expression on her face, and then said, “We’ll see.”

She left a slightly grinning Rose behind her, sway in her step as she made her way to the showers.

 

The night before the last day, everyone gathered for the traditional campfire. Around the burning logs, there was a sea of girls, all laughing and chatting in their brand-new customized camp sweatshirts. Luisa tugged on her own as she grilled a half-eaten marshmallow by the orange flames. All of her friends were sat around her, but her mind wasn’t there with them. Her mind was racing with so many different thoughts, Luisa was beginning to consider sticking her head in the lake to cool off.

Mostly, it was because her nerves for tomorrow’s race were pulled tight; even if it wasn’t a prestigious competition, it was _still_ a competition. And after each and every practice, she felt like she'd improved, even if just by a fraction of a second or a single move in her strokes. Tomorrow was going to be her summer's swan song, and she was scared of letting herself down. And if not herself, then her coach. Oh, and her _mentor_.

She looked to the other side of the fire. Rose was arguing with one of the other mentors about something, Luisa was too far to hear about what. But it seemed she was winning. Her eyes kept flicking to the untouched marshmallow in her hands; it didn’t seem like she would take a bite.

After Luisa had been staring at the girl for a while, Rose's eyes met hers. She smiled at Luisa, waving with just a brief fiddle of her fingers. Luisa sighed and waved back. She waited for Rose to turn away, go back to talking to her friends, but she didn’t. Her eyes stayed on Luisa.

It was a wild thought, but over the last week, Luisa had started to realize how much she actually _liked_ Rose. Before, she had been so concentrated on hating her for always pushing her so much. Now, as she saw how deep the girl's neckline could dip and how alive her eyes looked under the new moon, Luisa felt like she could stare at her until the logs were burnt to coal. Even longer.

It wasn’t only how she looked, though. It was also the way she could be so secretive sometimes. Luisa _still_ hadn’t managed to pry the truth about their poker match out of her.

Was Rose's concealment driving her crazy? Yes! But was it also kind of hot and mysterious? Oh, god, _yes_.

All those sharp whistles and bossy nags didn’t seem to matter that much anymore. Rose was pretty great.

Luisa peeled off the burnt marshmallow of her stick and stuck it in her mouth. As pretty and cool as Rose was, she was still a year older than her. Luisa herself was on her way to senior year of high school while Rose was already going to college. And Rose was – in Luisa's own opinion – way out of her league.

And Rose would never be interested in her, a girl younger than her, not as good looking as her, not as good of a swimmer as her…

But what are cute girls made for if not to break your heart?

Rose tilted her head to the side, mouthing an are-you-okay to Luisa. Luisa nodded and smiled. Rose frowned skeptically back at her.

Luisa waved it away, threw her stick in the flames, and got up. She didn’t have the patience to stuff herself with marshmallows anymore. At first, she wasn’t sure where she was going, but at some point, she realized she was walking to the lake.

By the water's eye, she crunched down, and from there fell on her butt, cradling her knees into her hands.

At least her father was coming tomorrow. This assured her anxiety.

“You walk fast for a girl with so short legs,” Rose appeared from behind the trees. There were these massive oaks growing around the lake, sort of like a wall, separating the body of water from the rest of the world. Under the night sky, you could easily be fooled to actually be in another world. A world without traffic lights, a world without worries, and a world without the segregation between you and that pretty girl you've been dying to kiss.

Luisa released her legs from her arms as Rose took a seat beside her, leaving just an inch of a gap between them.

Rose leaned on her hands and tilted her head again.

“Did I go over the speed limit for short girls?” Luisa said, keeping her serious face, but knitting a smile into her voice. Rose brought that smile to life, grinning at Luisa almost as brightly as the stars above them.

“Well, you _could_ have waited for me,” Rose explained. “Is something wrong? You seemed distracted.”

Luisa exhaled, peering at the lake's edges run around the water. “I’m just… worried for tomorrow’s race.”

“Although anticipation is one of the best adrenaline inducers, there’s nothing for you to be worried about.”

Luisa huffed. “Yeah, that’s because you kept yelling at me in practice.”

Rose uh-uh-d understandingly. “I was doing my job. Just doing my job.”

She smiled at Luisa so innocently, Luisa was having a hard time recalling all the scolding the girl had done to her over the summer.

“And as I always do my job well, you are ready for tomorrow.”

Rose turned her eyes from Luisa to the sky. She awed at the infinity of it, of all the stars and the moon. “It’s beautiful tonight.”

Luisa kept her eyes on Rose’s face as she said, “You have no idea.”

They sat there by the lake, both of them admiring a sky full of stars, or, in Luisa's case, the milky way of freckles across the sky that was Rose’s pale face. Suddenly, Luisa felt her hand against Rose’s, and an electric current ran through her body.

Rose seemed to be so fixed on the night sky that Luisa wasn’t sure if she'd even noticed it.

It was cold for a late-July night. After a while, Luisa started shivering, even in that tacky thick camp sweatshirt of hers. Rose did notice that.

“Do you want my shirt?”

“Uhm, what?”

“You look like you’re five degrees away from becoming an icicle. Here,” Rose pulled off her own sweatshirt and tied it around Luisa. “I can’t have my mentee freeze to death a night before the race.”

It wasn’t only Luisa's body temperature that increased with Rose's gesture. Had it been lighter outside, Rose would have seen Luisa's cheeks color into a rosy pink tone.

“Thank you.”

“Sure,” Rose said before picking up a tune, only humming at first but then adding sentences as she went on. It was an oldie but a goodie.

Rose’s voice thrilled through the night as she sang. She had a wide pitch – high notes were sharp but gentle to Luisa's ear, and lower ones were smooth like honey on Sunday morning pancakes.

“ _But in your dreams, whatever they'll be, dream a little dream of me_ ,” Rose got to the end of the song. She turned to Luisa with a tired grin playing on her lips.

“ _Dream_ ,” she covered her hand with Luisa's as their eyes met in the dark, “ _a little dream of me_.”

And then, it was silence. With only grasshoppers sawing in the background, they looked at each other with nothing to say. They didn’t have anything to say. All they wanted was to _do_ , but neither of them had enough courage to begin.

Luisa lowered her gaze to the ground. “I’m still nervous for tomorrow.”

Rose chuckled, biting her lip while looking at the suddenly insecure girl before her.

“Not funny.”

Luisa peeked at Rose behind her lashes, trying to stay serious, even though the smile on Rose’s face made it nearly impossible to do.

The redhead laughed some more, but after a while, her smile faltered, and she stood up.

“I’ll tell you what,” she grabbed one of her feet, and started undoing the laces of her sneakers. “I’ll show you how good you are by racing you to the big oak by the pier and back. This way, you can also get rid of that unnecessary anxiety that’s itching on you right now.”

Luisa's mouth fell open. “Are you insane?! It’s not even warm enough for sleeveless shirts. I'm wearing _two_ sweatshirts and I'm still freezing!”

Rose had pulled open both her shoes' laces and kicked them off. “But water's warm. Come on! Show me what you’re made of.”

She smirked at Luisa challengingly, exactly like that time they'd played poker together.

Luisa looked at Rose like she was stupid and didn’t move an inch. “What if I don’t have my swimsuit on?”

Rose took the hems of her t-shirt. “Then,” she pulled the shirt over her head, revealing her trimmed stomach, “you’ll have to skinny dip. Now, strip!”

With a groan, Luisa jumped up, starting to undress herself. When she was done, she looked up from her discarded clothes on the ground to the half-naked girl before her, and her pupils went wide.

“Wow,” she muttered. Rose looked at her.

“What is it?”

“It’s just,” _you’re so fucking breathtakingly beautiful_ , she wanted to say, “colder than I thought.”

Rose grinned at her, playing with one of her bikini straps. It was red, really, very, _so_ red. And it melted with Rose's pale skin perfectly.

“The more the reason to get into the water, then,” Rose mused. “Nice _swimsuit_ , by the way.”

Luisa looked down at the floral-patterned Speedo suit around her body. Yes, she _was_ wearing a swimsuit.

“I was being hypothetical before,” she explained, shifting in place, trying to ignore the goosebumps all over her arms and legs.

Rose rolled her eyes. She was really good at that. “And got my hopes up.”

Luisa's eyebrows rose.

Rose only laughed and grabbed Luisa's hand. They ran into the mild late-summer water, Luisa shrieking and falling as soon as water was up to her hips. It was all giggles and splashing each other after that. Tomorrow’s race was already far from Luisa's mind as Rose pulled her under the water with herself. They broke the surface together, their breaths out of it and their lips curved into smiles too wide for their faces. Luisa was just about to return the favor, to push Rose under, when Rose put her hands up, panting. “I give up. Enough of this. It’s time for the ultimate freestyle race – a rookie versus her mentor!”

Luisa kicked her in the shoulder. “Who are you calling a rookie here?!”

“Prove me you’re not one, then,” Rose witted, taking her starting position. “You ready?”

Luisa sighed, and positioned herself as well.

Rose counted from one to three, and they took off. One moment, it was Rose in the lead, but then, Luisa added power to her strokes, and she pulled forward. Luisa peeked from the corner of her eye to Rose, seeing the girl take it easier than she'd seen her at national meets. When they got to the pier – Luisa first – she stopped, frowning.

“You let me win!” she accused.

Rose shook her hair of the water stuck in between the red locks, smiling innocently. “Maybe.”

“You really suck,” Luisa mumbled.

“Okay, okay. I promise, I'll give my all, now. Happy?” she looked at Luisa, her eyes flicking from Luisa's to her lips. Luisa shuddered, nodding, her eyes fixed on Rose.

“Good,” she replied, her face now closer to Luisa's. It seemed so right. All they had to do now was to lose these last few inches between and kiss. But Luisa cut it off with a splash at her mentor’s face. Rose wiped her face, frowning.

“What was that for?”

“For getting me to swim that late at night.”

Rose chuckled, her low-pitched laugh filling the silence of the night.

Luisa sighed, looking deep into Rose’s eyes. “Again?”

They counted to three together this time, and pushed themselves off the muddy ground, water rushing past their feet and their lungs cycling the little breaths of air they got. Both of them were truly giving their all, slicing the water in their way. Luisa was a little ahead at the start, but a few yards before the finish line Rose suddenly swished past her.

 

“Good race,” Luisa said as she squeezed water out of her hair, still standing in the lake up to her knees. Rose came to stand next to her, handing Luisa her own sweatshirt.

“Thanks.”

“So, I'm _not_ ready for tomorrow, then,” Luisa breathed out, looking at the surface of the water, trying to make out her feet under.

“Oh, you’re ready. Just because you lost to me doesn’t mean you won’t do well enough tomorrow.”

They soaked their feet under the moon for a while longer 'til Rose suggested they should call it a night. Luisa agreed, following Rose back to the rooms. They stopped in front of Luisa's, hovering by the door.

“Get a good night’s sleep. You'll need it tomorrow,” Rose smiled, brushing her hand over Luisa's arm. She was still wearing Rose’s sweatshirt over her own. As Luisa realized it, she quickly started pulling off the piece of clothing.

“Oh, I still have your sweatshirt on. Hang on,” she bit her lip as she struggled to get it off; it was glued to her.

Rose laughed. “It’s fine, keep it. Let it be a promise from you to me to come back next summer.”

 

The next morning, Luisa woke up with her nerves playing the tarantella and her nose buried deep into Rose’s sweatshirt. All through breakfast she kept thinking back to the previous night, recalling how Rose had adjusted her bikini and smiled to her, so bright.

She was so deep in thought, she almost didn’t even hear her phone ringing in her back pocket. When she finally did, she fished it out, smiling, as she saw the caller ID.

“Hi, daddy!”

“ _Darling_ ,” he began with a voice already too familiar to Luisa. “ _You know how important this meeting is for me._ ”

Luisa fisted the fork in her hand and shut her eyes tight. _Of course_.

“Uh-uh,” was all she managed to mumble without letting him hear the crack in her voice.

“ _I can’t make it to your competition, Luisa. I’m sorry_ ,” it was all she’d heard before. It was like listening to a broken cassette tape, hearing the same phrases all over again.

“ _I’ll send my driver to pick you up, okay?_ ”

Luisa nodded before she remembered she was on the phone with him, not talking in person.

“I understand. I'll see you back at the Marbella. Bye, dad,” she didn’t even want to hear what else he had to say. Nothing could have compensated for him being a no-show, again. Luisa wondered if he'd even called off the meeting in the first place. With her teeth furiously shutting together and her fork ruffling around a piece of an omelet on her plate, she finished her breakfast without a word nor a smile.

 

Luisa was just in the middle of doing her pre-meet ritual, stretching and giving herself a pep-talk in front of the mirror in the locker room (which she wasn’t in the mood for today, really) when she heard the door open and shut. She kept on pulling her right arm with her left, until her eyes met with the eyes she’d been admiring the whole camp. Rose was smiling in the mirror, her facial features more pronounced as her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail. Luisa knew how satisfactory it would have been to pull that hairband off and tangle her fingers in these locks. But she couldn’t. And, as quick as that thought had been to come, it also disappeared.

“There’s quite a lot of people out there. But hey, no pressure,” she assured, “just keep everything we went over in mind, and you can make your dear daddy proud.”

Luisa's eyes dropped to the ground. She had to swallow down the lump in her throat before she could answer. “Yeah, he's not going to be a problem. He didn’t even bother to show.”

Her fingers trailed over her hairline, fixing the stray strands of hair into her messy up-do.

“I’m sorry. I know how you feel.”

Luisa pulled her sky-blue swimming cap on, the sound of the rubber snapping against her head sharp, and turned in her spot.

“How exactly? You've been raised with silver spoons, always getting what you want. Your dad is _always_ in the front, cheering you on. You _don’t_ get to empathize here,” Luisa was really pissed off. Later on, she said she was under the pressure of the meet, but at this moment, she really thought Rose was wrong.

Rose scoffed. “And you should not be saying that because you don’t know me, Luisa. You have no fucking idea about my life. I'm just your mentor!”

“Good, if that’s established, could you get back to acting like one?”

Her eyes were shooting flames, and her hands were clenched into fists. Rose glared at her back.

“Fine, though, I didn’t realize I had stopped,” she bit back. It was getting real tense between them, and it wasn’t that kind that Luisa had felt the previous night. It seemed, the girl she’d been longing for was gone. Who was left of her was an insensitive jerk, the one who’d really been mentoring her for the past few weeks.

“You’re such a jerk!”

“Oh, you talk to the coach with that mouth? Or, how do you manage to keep your breathing with that ruined mouth of yours, huh?” Rose's eyes seemed less blue by the second as she yelled, gesturing with her hands and pointing her finger at Luisa.

“Huh, I'll guess I will then get to disappoint you with my strain of a mouth!”

“Good!” Rose grunted.

“Good!” Luisa bit back. And then, Rose was out of the room with the ghosts of her foot stumps echoing behind her, and Luisa slumping against the wall with a sigh. This really wasn’t the best day of her life. But screw Rose; she could do this, even without Rose as her friend by the side. Luisa had herself, she always did.

Leaving that scene behind her, she walked up to the block as her name was called. Her eyes ran over the crowd, making out a few of her friends already wrapped into their towels or even their sweatshirts. Luisa was among the last girls to swim, there was the pressure of the spectacle ending. People were anticipating for effort on all their behalf, it’s just that the first and the last are always harder to forget.

She pushed her goggles to vacuum and stretched her hands one last time. Shaking her head, her eyes stopped on the redhead sat in the front row just by the finish line. Their eyes met for a second but drifted apart as if it had never happened. It seemed foolish, naïve, even, that she’d thought they could be friends.

She cast a glance at Rose one last time before anchoring her fingers around the edge of her block. That’s what you get for falling too fast and falling too hard. Sometimes people could be inviting at first but then, could sting you like a wasp.

Her ears barely registered the coach's whistle go off, her mind still stuck on Rose. And, for just a brief moment before she met the pool’s surface, an empty gap in the second row pinched her heart; Emilio could have been sitting there with her brother. Instead, she had her douche of a mentor judging her moves and timing her laps in the front row.

With anger flowing through her system, Luisa was well ahead of the others in the pool. She even felt like she had never swum that fast before. She got proud, added her fury-fed energy to her strokes as she approached the wall. Having dived under, she still had too great of a tempo as she pulled her chin on her chest, entering the first phase of doing the flip. But as she was about to boost herself off the wall, she slipped. Her lungs pulled in a massive amount of water as she choked, resurfacing with her face all blue. Luisa's ears were ringing with water still deep in them, but she thought she heard people gasping, and someone rushing over to her side of the pool. She didn’t see who it was, but she made herself continue. She _had to_ finish this.

Through half-lucid mind, she crossed the finish line, placing last.

Roughly, she as much as tore her goggles off, tossing them to who knows where, and rubbed her eyes. It was a good thing she was wet all over – no one could distinguish her tears from the chloride water on her face.

She pushed herself up on her hands and crawled out of the pool. Everyone was still cheering in the background as she hurried into the locker room, feeling the sharp pain of her hair sticking to her cap as she tugged it off.

The worst she had feared had happened, and she couldn’t decide whether to be glad about it or not.

She had just peeled one of the straps of her swimsuit off when someone entered.

Luisa leaned against her locker and gritted her teeth together as Rose came to stand before her.

“I don’t want to hear it, Rose.”

“Hear what?” Rose raised her eyebrows.

“How I let you down, how I am the most pathetic mentee you've ever had, how my arrogance got the better of me- “

Rose waved with her hands for Luisa to stop talking.

“You are arrogant, yes. And I still think you crossed the line before, when we were talking. But no, Luisa,” she took a step closer to her. “You wouldn’t believe me if I said _how well_ you actually did. You were incredible.”

Luisa rolled her teary eyes. “Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious. And the fact that you kept going, even when I thought you were too blue – literally – to keep going, shows you don’t surrender. So you slipped, this kind of things happen to everyone.”

Her hand rested on Luisa's shoulder as she tried to make eye contact with the girl.

“I call bullshit.”

Rose groaned. “Why are you so difficult sometimes? What have I ever done to you?”

Luisa stared at Rose's lips. “You hate me.”

Rose leaned back, her hand falling from Luisa. She burst into laughter, her chuckles so softly filling the room.

“What’s so funny?”

Rose stopped laughing and fixated her gaze on Luisa. “I don’t hate you.”

They were waiting for something in that moment to happen, but as Luisa's nerves got tighter, she wasn’t sure for what anymore. Rose's beautiful long hair fell from her braid as she pulled off the hairband. Combing her fingers through her hair, a modest smile on her face, Rose eyed her so fixedly.

“You don’t? But I ruined the match, I suck. I’m one of the worst swimmers to ever attend this camp!”

The redhead exhaled, her eyes flicking between Luisa’s eyes and somewhere below her jaw.

“You. Did. Great,” was all she said before she erased all the empty steps between them.

Rose let her poker face fall.

Her hands came to rest on Luisa's shoulders before she leaned in, arching into Luisa's body, and kissed Luisa softly and briefly.

It happened so fast, too fast, for Luisa to react. Even before she could kiss back, Rose's amazingly soft lips were off hers and Rose's firm grip on her shoulders gone.

“I’ll see you next year.”

She walked out of the room, leaving a first-time kissed Luisa behind, daring to hope they'd ever get to do that again.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'll see you next year? (no, I'm kidding, _I can't stay away from you_ guys for that long  <3)


End file.
